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This pioneering site is where new journalism meets oral history. It contains fresh and archive long-form audio interviews with interesting people, largely uncut and free to the user for non-commercial use. Please also visit our extensive archive of print and photo posts at the main Generalist site here.

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Wednesday, November 21. 2007

It was a rather overcast, oppressive and edgy autumn afternoon in Ladbroke Grove, My ring on the bell of the flat where Mike has lived for many years, woke him from a nap. He let me in and led me on a short pathway past cascading oceanic waves of archive material heaped willy-nilly, down some short steps into a tiny kitchen where we sat and had tea and talked round the formica table, crammed up together for more than one intensive hour.

The interview is in two parts; the first is a wonderful recounting of Mike's wartime childhood experiences where he first read and wrote poems, sang and learnt to perform. He tells of his Blakean scholarship years in Oxford, the early years of hitchhiking round Britain performing jazz and poetry events, the nascent 'beat movement' in Britain. He recalls the seminal poetry event at the Albert Hall he helped organise ( the grandly titled 'The First International Poetry Incarnation', held on 11th June 1965, indelibly recorded in the film 'Wholly Communion') and the long and continuing history of his journal New Departures, the formation of the Poetry Olympics and his involvement and encouragement of poets from many cultures.

Samuel Beckett, William Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg, Jack Bruce, Dudley Moore, Stan Tracey, Spike Hawkins, Adrian Mitchell, Christopher Logue, Kathleen Raine and Linton Kwesi Johnson are just some of the people fondly recalled for their roles in shaping the post-war poetic history of Britain and beyond.

The second part is dedicated to Michael’s major work ‘A New Waste Land’ – the product of ten years effort, described in more detail on our main site here . It makes for strong listening.

This long-form illustrated poem – which combines many moods, styles and influences – rants about the Labour Party’s betrayal of its roots and beliefs and the catastrophic effects of the Blair/Bush and Clinton foreign policies, and rails against the New Philistinism and extremist fundamentalism. This is backed up by a giant addendum to the main work, which provides an extensive collection of his research relating to the subjects and themes in the poem.

The work’s positive and visionary aspect comes from the repeated discursions throughout the poem into the thoughts, lives, ideas, images and actions of a kind of personal ‘heavenly host’ of artistic spirits, who continue to offer us succour, support and inspiration in these benighted times.

Horovitz explains the strength and inspiration he draws from T.S. Eliot’s original 'The Waste Land', explains its prescience and deplores the fact that, since the poem’s first publication in 1922, the barbarism in the world seems to have got worse. He hopes his book will find its place in the global movement searching for the authentic New Jerusalems.

For more information, read previous postings on the main Generalist site:
The Poetry Olympics Twenty05 - Wholly Communion Renewed

For more on T.S.Eliot and 'The Waste Land' see:
William Burroughs & T.S. Eliot Fighting in the Captain's Tower
A Meeting with Burroughs At The Chelsea

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